Industry Sectors

Healthcare(1)| Information Technology | Manufacturing | Services

Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry (also called the medical industry or health economy) is an aggregation and integration of sectors within the economic system that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative care. It includes the generation and commercialization of goods and services lending themselves to maintaining and re-establishing health. The modern healthcare industry is divided into many sectors and depends on interdisciplinary teams of trained professionals and paraprofessionals to meet health needs of individuals and populations.

The healthcare industry is one of the world's largest and fastest-growing industries. Consuming over 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of most developed nations, health care can form an enormous part of a country's economy.(2)

Information Technology

Information technology (IT) is the application of computers to store, study, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data, or information, often in the context of a business or other enterprise. IT is considered a subset of information and communications technology (ICT). In 2012, Zuppo proposed an ICT hierarchy where each hierarchy level "contain some degree of commonality in that they are related to technologies that facilitate the transfer of information and various types of electronically mediated communications."

The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Several industries are associated with information technology, including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment, and e-commerce.(2)

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the value added production of merchandise for use or sale using labour and machines, tools, chemical and biological processing, or formulation. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such finished goods may be sold to other manufacturers for the production of other, more complex products, such as aircraft, household appliances or automobiles, or sold to wholesalers, who in turn sell them to retailers, who then sell them to end users and consumers.(2)

Services

The service sector provides a service, not an actual product that could be held in your hand. Activities in the service sector include retail, banks, hotels, real estate, education, health, social work, computer services, recreation, media, communications, electricity, gas and water supply.

The service sector is an important part of the economy. For example, in Australia in 2007, 85% of all businesses were in the service sector. In 2009 there were more than nine million people employed in the service sector in Australia, which was 86% of all jobs. In India, there has been a huge growth in service sector businesses which made up 55% of India's GDP in 2006—2007. Computer software businesses in India are increasing at a rate of 35% per year.

Increasingly service sector businesses focus on what is now being called the “knowledge economy”. They need to keep ahead of other businesses by understanding what it is their customers want and be in a position to give it to them quickly and at low cost.(2)

(1) Healthcare excludes 20 county region of Western Pennsylvania and any PLSG portfolio company(2) Definitions from Wikipedia